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The next id tech is only something that Carmack is theorizing about. The hardware that would be needed to support it does not exist. And it's not a sure bet even that it will ever exist. He's only guessing at what direction graphics hardware will move in the future.

I would argue that JC theories are 80% correct. He's pretty spot on or on the mark so to speak. Not only smart but has excellent foresight.

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I'm a bit iffy about that engine because there are limitations to detail when volume of data is concerned. Notice in one of the youtube video's "meet the crew" he has hired a "data packer". I bet this is for the very reason that they are simply running out of space to store the large volumes of dynamic voxel sets. I call them dynamic voxel sets because it looks like euclideon is synthesising the creation of new voxels inside smaller blocks of voxels. Much like an octree but with more code to create/synthesise data than just load more data.

"Sir, this computer has a... TEN... MEGAbyte harddrive! You'll never fill that one in your lifetime!"
Storage capacity grows every year. But let's look at it from another perspective. A triangle requires at least three polygons. We're approaching (tesselation) detail of more than a triangle per pixel (Crysis 2 useless PC Tesselation patch). At this point, storing models with that kind of (non-tesselated) polygon detail requires much more than a single voxel in an octree. You can actually get that voxel data down to one bit on avarage in a sparse voxel octree. That means that voxel data suddenly become much more compact to store.

Notice how JC mentions that no matter the detail, the end result is the inspired content. If the game is dull and boring, graphics only prove a shallow wow factor before the fun wears off. I think this is the sole reason for the success of games like fallout new vegas. The game engine is 5 years old but the game itself has oodles of awesome content that made the game what it is, regardless of it's obsolete 3D engine. Same with minecraft, not exactly the best graphics, but the inspired gameplay gets people hooked for months.

I just finished Ultimate Doom (all episodes). To me gameplay matters more than graphics, by far. But what I want is a total experience out of game. Doom gives me a whole better experience than Crysis, because it's much more believable.

Comparing Doom's graphics to Crysis, I find Doom a much better emersive experience. That's because Doom doesn't look like a washed out tattoo, spreaded as a wallpaper over paper-model shape with a custom shiny wax job on top.

Speaking of which, what type of storage system is a game like minecraft using? It looks like a voxel octree... It would be good to load up one of those minecraft maps in a voxel editor to play around with the data sets.

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"Sir, this computer has a... TEN... MEGAbyte harddrive! You'll never fill that one in your lifetime!"
Storage capacity grows every year. But let's look at it from another perspective. A triangle requires at least three polygons. We're approaching (tesselation) detail of more than a triangle per pixel (Crysis 2 useless PC Tesselation patch). At this point, storing models with that kind of (non-tesselated) polygon detail requires much more than a single voxel in an octree. You can actually get that voxel data down to one bit on avarage in a sparse voxel octree. That means that voxel data suddenly become much more compact to store.

I just finished Ultimate Doom (all episodes). To me gameplay matters more than graphics, by far. But what I want is a total experience out of game. Doom gives me a whole better experience than Crysis, because it's much more believable.

Comparing Doom's graphics to Crysis, I find Doom a much better emersive experience. That's because Doom doesn't look like a washed out tattoo, spreaded as a wallpaper over paper-model shape with a custom shiny wax job on top.

I LoL'd loudly with the comment about Doom being a B grade horror while Crysis feels like Lego island. =)

Apparently Crysis uses an octree engine to store it's map data. That being said, I've not played much of the game, because just like you, I assumed it has poor story or gameplay. Though I have played crysis in multiplayer and it's just a huge camp fest... I absolutely loved the half life games because of the amazing immersion, though in saying that, after playing fallout 3 and fallout new vegas, I'm starting to not enjoy the unreality of the game. Fallout immersed me more simply because you just be yourself. But just like JC said, uninspired content can break even the best things. The addon packs to Fallout New Vegas are a bit of fail. Brought the story from A grade down to B grade in a shot. Compared to HL2 where the mission packs just made the game so much better.

Regarding hard drive space... Well... I get the feeling hard drives are reaching their limits. I don't think we'll ever see 1 exa byte hard drives. New technology will most surely have to surpass current disk drive technology. SSD's are promising but still have a long way to go. JC said himself that we have to work with the now and not pretend something better is magically going to fix all these current issues. (that being hdd space) JC is partly lucky too, even back in the days of quake 2, he was actively using new gen hardware long before release. That's a good thing, because when the game ships, it works and is usually fast.

My gripe is on par with JC that consoles are reigning supreme. I've changed my entire disposition of the likes of STEAM simply because it's things like that, which are keeping us PC gamers in the financial loop. I hated steam once. I still feel it puts the user in limbo though, because all those games revolve around that one piece of software. Which makes me happy that RAGE won't be steam dependant even though it will be sold through steam. So JC did a good thing there. Though I'm not happy about his change in Linux support. Especially since his technology shouldn't need the latest driver support to begin with. That won't stop me from playing the game though.

On a bright note, you may have convinced me to play Doom3 (in Linux). Since I've finished both Doom 1 and 2 all those years ago...

No I meant visual representation. The Storm comic has amazing painted visuals. Seriously, google it You know it's not photorealisticly real, but it's better looking than a photo of something. What I meant to illustrate with that Thunderburd Island was that Crysis looked like plastic toy environment where it wan't to be real but fails. It's like trying realy hard to not spark my imagination and tell me right in my face that it's very purpose is to not be classic.

Doom is comes more close to Lego for me than Crysis. Lego is holy (Technic Lego) and I wouldn't even dare to compare Crysis to it.

BTW that cloudy image versus that fair/christmas-tree/merry-go-round was supposed to illustrate atmosphere. DoomGL looks like shit. Lightning in any texture filtering game looks like shit. I'd rather get a contrast ratio difference than lightspots because in my head, the world doesn't look like a fscking christmass tree.

I absolutely loved the half life games because of the amazing immersion, though in saying that, after playing fallout 3 and fallout new vegas, I'm starting to not enjoy the unreality of the game.

Half-Life 2 looks a lot better than any game produced after it because the atmosphere is so great. It has that atmospheric feel to it like everything is happening like as if it was a normal day, but you're fantasy kicks in like "OMG we're opressed. Time to kick some ass!". I mean the artwork just feels right.

Regarding hard drive space... Well... I get the feeling hard drives are reaching their limits.

Not by a long shot. We still have holographic stuff, atom based stuff. Limits until the sales are going down. If people are saying something's impossible, than what they are realy saying is "I don't know how to do it".

I'm not happy about his change in Linux support. Especially since his technology shouldn't need the latest driver support to begin with.

Them you haven't seen the Quakecon 2011 Carmack Keynote speech video over at YouTube. The problem with the latest drivers is no what is being rendered, but by cutting the latency with streamed textures as agressively as Rage does. Currently PC drivers abstract everything and to this day still mostly abstract all memory management, which HW only manages to overcome by brute processing power.

On a bright note, you may have convinced me to play Doom3 (in Linux). Since I've finished both Doom 1 and 2 all those years ago...

Dunno if you ever watched the movie Alien, but get prepared to shit yourself with Doom3 It's the perfect match of Japanese horror keeping you scared with American horror triggering that and making you shoot out of your chair. In the beginning you're like "OK yawn... light got out no big deal", but further down, just a single spontanious decompression of a gaspipe make you jump out of your chair and it's like "WOAH! SHI-... oh just a pipe...phew".

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No I meant visual representation. The Storm comic has amazing painted visuals. Seriously, google it You know it's not photorealisticly real, but it's better looking than a photo of something. What I meant to illustrate with that Thunderburd Island was that Crysis looked like plastic toy environment where it wan't to be real but fails. It's like trying realy hard to not spark my imagination and tell me right in my face that it's very purpose is to not be classic.

Doom is comes more close to Lego for me than Crysis. Lego is holy (Technic Lego) and I wouldn't even dare to compare Crysis to it.

I mean in the sense that the purpose of Crysis was a visual spectacle vs Doom 3 which was intended as a great game... Lego is holy, I have a tonn of it. xD

BTW that cloudy image versus that fair/christmas-tree/merry-go-round was supposed to illustrate atmosphere. DoomGL looks like shit. Lightning in any texture filtering game looks like shit. I'd rather get a contrast ratio difference than lightspots because in my head, the world doesn't look like a fscking christmass tree.

Half-Life 2 looks a lot better than any game produced after it because the atmosphere is so great. It has that atmospheric feel to it like everything is happening like as if it was a normal day, but you're fantasy kicks in like "OMG we're opressed. Time to kick some ass!". I mean the artwork just feels right.

Never played DoomGL, but I know what you mean. I did the same thing in Sports Car GT. Turned off the bi-linear filtering as it made the game feel better. Plus back in those days it ran smoother and that was more important. HL2 felt good due to a great many of factors. Audio / Scripting / Map design / Game mechanics... It goes against the norm by focusing on what true gamers know is important.

Not by a long shot. We still have holographic stuff, atom based stuff. Limits until the sales are going down. If people are saying something's impossible, than what they are realy saying is "I don't know how to do it".

Not sure if you know but the life expectancy of hard drives is much lower these days than they were 10 years ago. SSD's will soon have longer life expectancies. (MTBF)

Them you haven't seen the Quakecon 2011 Carmack Keynote speech video over at YouTube. The problem with the latest drivers is no what is being rendered, but by cutting the latency with streamed textures as agressively as Rage does. Currently PC drivers abstract everything and to this day still mostly abstract all memory management, which HW only manages to overcome by brute processing power.

Dunno if you ever watched the movie Alien, but get prepared to shit yourself with Doom3 It's the perfect match of Japanese horror keeping you scared with American horror triggering that and making you shoot out of your chair. In the beginning you're like "OK yawn... light got out no big deal", but further down, just a single spontanious decompression of a gaspipe make you jump out of your chair and it's like "WOAH! SHI-... oh just a pipe...phew".

I've seen Aliens 1 / 2 and Predator 1 / 2. (I loved the first AvP too but didn't like AvP 2 or the new AvP game / movie...

JC actually complained about PC drivers in general. In that you can access texture data directly with a console but not with a PC. Or if you do, the driver does some fugly stuff behind the scenes and wastes a tonn of resources. It means that PC hardware is 10x faster than console but only achieves about 2x the speed due to the driver architecture. So this wouldn't matter in Linux or Windows.

Doom 3 is just zombies jumping out of closets or weird cyborg/demons teleporting into this dimension directly behind you and is localized to Mars.

In Half-Life 2 the entire Earth has been taken over by a technologically advanced race that has suppressed human reproduction and are forcing humans into ghettos using quasi-fascist tactics apparently in preparation as a food/slave source.

One is a frightening idea, the other is just cheap theatrics. Both are fun, though.

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Doom 3 is just zombies jumping out of closets or weird cyborg/demons teleporting into this dimension directly behind you and is localized to Mars.

In Half-Life 2 the entire Earth has been taken over by a technologically advanced race that has suppressed human reproduction and are forcing humans into ghettos using quasi-fascist tactics apparently in preparation as a food/slave source.

One is a frightening idea, the other is just cheap theatrics. Both are fun, though.

No none of them are frightening compared to Penumbra. That game is freaking scary!